Filed as #37 after a ~3 hr investigation that ruled out animation source,
backface culling/winding, palette overlay, and head-GfxObj polygons.
Confirmed:
- Stub is from part 9 (upper torso/coat) post-AnimPartChange (gfx 0x0100120D)
- Part 9's both surfaces ARE matched by our 2 TextureChanges
- Server data complete; composition formula matches ACME + retail decomp
Untested hypothesis space (next session):
- Texture decode chain (compare our SurfaceDecoder vs ACME TextureHelpers)
- Polygon-to-surface index off-by-one on part 9
- Multi-layer texture composition AC may do
- UV mapping bug
Diagnostic env vars committed to source for next-session reuse:
- ACDREAM_HIDE_PART=N — hide specific humanoid part to localize bugs
- ACDREAM_NO_CULL=1 — disable backface culling
- ACDREAM_DUMP_CLOTHING=1 — dump APC + TC + per-part Surface chain coverage
Bug was originally reported as "head/neck protrudes forward"; the apparent
forward shift turned out to be an optical illusion from the missing
coat collar. Math + cdb-ground-truth + ACME comparison confirmed the
head placement is correct retail-faithful — see #37 for the long write-up.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
User report: other characters disappear when the camera rotates,
even though they're standing within visible distance.
Root cause: InstancedMeshRenderer's landblock-level frustum cull
(InstancedMeshRenderer.cs:352-355) skipped the entire landblock's
entity list when the landblock AABB was outside the frustum.
Static scenery culling that way is fine, but ANIMATED entities
(remote players, NPCs, monsters) got culled with the landblock --
they vanished as soon as the camera turned away from their block.
Fix: pass an animatedEntityIds set to Draw. Inside CollectGroups
the landblock-cull decision is now per-landblock boolean (not a
continue), and the per-entity loop bypasses the cull when the
entity id is in animatedEntityIds. Static entities still respect
the landblock cull. GameWindow rebuilds the set per frame from
_animatedEntities (typically <100 entities, cheap).
Fast path preserved: when animatedEntityIds is null/empty AND
the landblock is culled, skip the entity list entirely -- same
O(visible-landblocks) cost as before.
Tests stay 1439 green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wire the existing LightManager + WorldTimeService state into visible
rendering. Every draw call (terrain, static mesh, instanced mesh, sky)
now shares one SceneLighting UBO at binding=1 carrying:
- 8 Light slots (Directional / Point / Spot, retail hard-cutoff)
- Ambient RGB + active light count
- Fog start/end/mode + color + lightning flash scalar
- Camera world position + day fraction
The CPU side (SceneLightingUbo in Core.Lighting) is a POD struct that
gets BufferSubData'd once per frame from GameWindow.OnRender. Shaders
read the block via `layout(std140, binding = 1) uniform SceneLighting`
— no per-program uniform uploads.
Shader changes:
- mesh.frag + mesh_instanced.frag accumulate 8 dynamic lights per
fragment using the retail no-attenuation hard-cutoff model
(r13 §10.2 / §13.1). Sun reads slot 0; spots use hard cos-cone test.
Additive lightning flash + linear fog layered on top. Saturate
clamps per-channel to 1.0.
- terrain.vert bakes AdjustPlanes sun+ambient per vertex using the
retail MIN_FACTOR = 0.08 ambient floor (r13 §7). terrain.frag adds
fog + flash on top of the baked vertex color.
- mesh.vert + mesh_instanced.vert emit vWorldPos so the fragment
stage can do per-pixel lighting against world-space positions.
- New sky.vert / sky.frag pair — unlit, scroll-UV, camera-centered,
with its own 0.1..1e6 far plane. Ports WorldBuilder's skybox.
SkyRenderer (new file in App/Rendering/Sky/) ports WorldBuilder's
SkyboxRenderManager verbatim for the C# idiom: zeroed view translation,
dedicated projection, depth mask off, iterate each visible SkyObject
in the day group, apply arc transform (Z rot for heading + Y rot for
arc sweep), feed TexVelocityX/Y as a scrolling UV offset, apply
per-keyframe SkyObjectReplace overrides (mesh swap + transparency +
luminosity) for overcast / dusk cloud variants.
GameWindow integration:
- OnLoad parses Region (0x13000000) into LoadedSkyDesc and hot-swaps
WorldTime's provider to the dat-accurate keyframes. Seeds to noon
for offline rendering. Creates the SceneLightingUboBinding and the
SkyRenderer.
- OnRender: set clear color from atmosphere fog, tick WeatherSystem,
spawn/stop rain/snow camera-local emitters on kind change, feed
sun to LightManager (zero intensity indoors — r13 §13.7), tick
LightManager against viewer pos, build + upload the UBO, draw
sky before terrain, draw terrain + static + instanced using the
shared UBO.
5 new UBO packing tests (struct sizes, slot population, 8-light cap,
directional slot 0).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three separate fixes landed today, each addressing a specific bug the
user observed during live play:
1. NPC clothing changes by camera angle (InstancedMeshRenderer)
- Group key was (GfxObjId) only, so every humanoid NPC using the
same body mesh piled into one instance group; only the first
instance's texture was used for the entire DrawInstanced batch,
so which NPC's palette "won" changed as frustum culling and
iteration order shuffled entries.
- Now keyed by (GfxObjId, PaletteHash ^ SurfaceOverridesHash)
so only compatible instances batch; each unique appearance gets
its own draw call. Perf hit is small (humanoid NPCs each emit
one more draw call); visually every NPC is now stable.
2. GpuWorldState dedup on respawn
- Server re-sends CreateObject for the same guid on visibility
refresh / landblock crossing / appearance update. AppendLiveEntity
was blindly appending each time, so GpuWorldState accumulated
multiple copies of the same entity, each with its own
PaletteOverride / MeshRefs. That alone wasn't the clothing bug
(that was #1) but it would have caused other overlap problems
downstream.
- Added RemoveEntityByServerGuid + WorldGameState.RemoveById;
OnLiveEntitySpawnedLocked calls both before creating the new
entity so respawns replace cleanly.
3. Motion wire format — run animation sync with retail observers
- ACE's MovementData constructor only computes interpState.ForwardSpeed
on the WalkForward/WalkBackwards branch; every other ForwardCommand
falls into `else` and passes through WITHOUT speed set, giving
observers speed=0. Sending RunForward directly meant retail
clients saw us "run in place" while position drifted forward.
- Wire: always WalkForward + HoldKey.Run for running. ACE
auto-upgrades to RunForward with creature.GetRunRate() for
broadcast — correct command + correct speed at observers.
- Added per-axis FORWARD_HOLD_KEY / SIDE_STEP_HOLD_KEY /
TURN_HOLD_KEY so every active axis carries HoldKey.Run when
running (matches holtburger's build_motion_state_raw_motion_state).
- Added LocalAnimationCommand to MovementResult so our own
client still plays the RunForward cycle locally while the wire
stays WalkForward. Wire vs. local animation command are now
decoupled.
- Walk-backward wire command changed from WalkForward@-0.65 to
WalkBackward@1.0 (holtburger pattern).
- Strafe speed changed from 0.5 to 1.0 on wire AND local physics
(matches retail sidestep pace).
4. Jump height default + env-var tuning
- Default jumpSkill bumped from 100 → 200 (jump ≈ 3m at full
charge, closer to retail feel for a mid-level character).
- ACDREAM_RUN_SKILL and ACDREAM_JUMP_SKILL env vars now override
the defaults so the user can tune per-character until we parse
PlayerDescription and plumb real skill values through.
5. JustLanded signal on MovementResult
- Tracks airborne→grounded transition so future animation code
can fire the landing cycle when we land. Just a bool flag for
now — no consumer yet (the proper action-queue path will use it).
Not in this commit: jump animation itself. An earlier attempt to
SetCycle(Jump=0x2500003b) fed an Action-type motion into the SubState
cycle resolver, which produced a "torso" mis-render. Reverted. The
proper fix is porting the retail motion action-queue semantics into
AnimationSequencer — see docs/research/deepdives/r03-motion-animation.md
for the spec. That's the next session's work.
470 tests pass, build clean.
Port ACME's EnvCellManager portal visibility system:
- New CellVisibility class: BFS portal traversal from camera cell,
portal-side clip-plane test, FindCameraCell with grace period
- LoadedCell data populated during streaming (portals, clip planes,
world/inverse transforms, local AABB from CellStruct vertices)
- WorldEntity.ParentCellId tags interior entities for filtering
- InstancedMeshRenderer.Draw accepts optional visibleCellIds set —
interior entities whose parent cell isn't visible are skipped
- Conditional depth clear between terrain and static mesh when
camera is inside a cell (ACME GameScene.cs pattern)
When camera is outdoors, all interiors render (visibleCellIds=null).
When camera enters a building, only BFS-reachable cells render.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replace guessed sun direction (0.5, 0.4, 0.6) with ACME's verified
value (0.5, 0.3, -0.3) from GameScene.cs:238. Replace hardcoded
ambient/diffuse (0.25/0.75) with ACME's ambient intensity 0.45 from
LandscapeEditorSettings.cs:108.
Terrain shaders now match ACME Landscape.vert/frag pattern:
- Vertex shader computes Lambert term with xLightDirection uniform
- Fragment shader applies: color * (clamp(lambert, 0, 1) + xAmbient)
Static object shader matches ACME StaticObject.vert:
- LightingFactor = max(dot(N, -L), 0) + ambient
- Removed separate uDiffuseIntensity (ACME doesn't have one)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Replaces the per-entity glUniform uModel path with a shared instance VBO and
DrawElementsInstanced. All instance model matrices are uploaded to GPU once per
frame; the VAO's per-instance attribute pointers (locations 3–6, divisor=1) are
updated with a byte-offset re-point per group so a single VBO serves all groups
without requiring DrawElementsInstancedBaseInstance (not in Silk.NET 2.23).
Changes:
- InstancedMeshRenderer: add _instanceVbo, _instanceBuffer scratch; EnsureUploaded
sets up mat4 instance attrs (locs 3–6) from the shared VBO; Draw builds the flat
float[] of all instance matrices once then calls DrawElementsInstanced per sub-mesh.
Drops the unused uint TerrainLayer attribute (loc 3 from vertex VBO) — mesh shaders
never used it. Adds InstanceGroup helper to track per-group buffer offsets.
- mesh_instanced.frag: replace sampler2DArray+uTextureLayer with sampler2D uDiffuse,
matching the existing TextureCache / individual-texture pipeline.
- mesh_instanced.vert+frag: track as committed files (were untracked).
- Shader.cs: add SetVec3 helper needed for uLightDirection uniform.
- GameWindow.cs: switch mesh shader load from mesh.vert/.frag to
mesh_instanced.vert/.frag.
Visual output is identical: same entities, same textures, same lighting constants
(SUN_DIR=(0.5,0.4,0.6), AMBIENT=0.25, DIFFUSE=0.75 — moved from frag to vert).
Build: clean. Tests: 431/431 green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Groups all (entity, meshRef) pairs by GfxObjId before drawing so each
GfxObj's sub-meshes are processed as a contiguous batch. Still uses
per-entity uniform uModel — visual output is identical to the old
StaticMeshRenderer — but the _groups dict is the structural prerequisite
for swapping to DrawElementsInstanced in the follow-up commit.
Key changes:
- New InstancedMeshRenderer.cs with CollectGroups() that fills
_groups[gfxObjId] = List<InstanceEntry> each frame, reusing the
inner List<> objects to avoid per-frame allocation.
- Same two-pass (opaque+clipmap first, translucent second) draw logic
from StaticMeshRenderer, now iterating over groups rather than raw
entity/meshRef pairs.
- GameWindow.cs: field and constructor swapped from StaticMeshRenderer
to InstancedMeshRenderer — public API is identical.
- 431 tests green, 0 warnings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Sonnet 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
